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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sorry the review's so long - I got a little carried away ..., July 11, 2001
The first video in this package is a collection of live performances and backstage footage. There's nothing very revealing about frontman Trent Reznor, and the sound and picture quality are, as the disclaimer warns, "compromised", but there are many choice moments, the most obvious one being David Bowie joining the band for Hurt. If you persevere through the poor sound, there is some very funny conversation - David Bowie (again) telling of a 'fan's' mix-up of Bowie and Vanilla Ice is one example.Part 2 is a collection of all of NIN's music videos up to The Perfect Drug (with the exception of Burn, which, for completists, can be found on the second tape of the Natural Born Killers Director's Cut, and the complete Broken movie - sorry, can't help you there). It opens with a short video of A Warm Place (these instrumental videos are scattered through the collection, along with short film reels of, among other things, an elephant being electrocuted), but the first video proper is Head Like A Hole, a fairly MTV-friendly clip with jump-cuts galore. It's not exactly ground-breaking, but it does the job nicely. The second video (Sin) is where it starts to get nasty. Those with any sort of moral objection to homosexuals smearing blood over each other should probably hit the fast-forward button. Anyone who is comfortable with explicit nudity, however, should be fine, although the meagre two-minute run time may disappoint you. Down In It is a return to Head Like A Hole territory (it has the same director) although slightly less MTV-friendly, as it includes a dead Trent Reznor. This is the uncut version. The next few videos make up most of the tracks (except for Last) from the Broken EP (including the instrumentals). Standouts are Wish, in which the band perform in a cage surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob trying to get in, and Help Me I Am In Hell, in which a man eats his dinner in a room filled with flies - this one may prove a little too much for people with an aversion to bugs, but it's nothing compared to Happiness In Slavery, in which "supermasochist" performance artist Bob Flannigan is tortured, ripped apart and eventually minced by a dentist's chair-esque contraption. If you have any doubts, steer clear. This was banned for a reason. PS. The video for Gave Up is not the infamous snuff video, but there is an appearance by a virtually unrecognisable Marilyn Manson. The March Of The Pigs video is just the band performing live in a white room. The sound's not great, but it's worth it to see a manic Trent Reznor going through three microphones. Next up is a live triplet of Eraser, Hurt and Wish. Besides the enormous projected snakes, time-lapse photography of dead foxes etc, it's really just what you'd expect. Excellent stuff, and with far better sound quality than the first video. And now, the high point of the package (for me at least) - the uncut version of Closer, in all its perverse, disturbing glory. Its inventive images (which I'm not going to spoil for you) would be worth the asking price on their own. Finally, The Perfect Drug, which is a little like a post-Closer cool-down. Both the song and video are superb (and the video is definitely worth seeing for Reznor's rather fetching moustache), but it's got a more cold, gothic feel. It's a shift in tone, and it works very well. Overall, this is a superb collection, and worth buying, because if you are any kind of NIN fan, you will watch them repeatedly.
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~ Nine Inch Nails
~ Nine Inch Nails
~ Nine Inch Nails
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DVD ~ Nine Inch Nails
DVD ~ Trent Reznor
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